Someone has a meter that breaks down or explodes when the readings are too high for it to handle. No, it's not when it's measuring something that could reasonably destroy the scale, like measuring greater extreme heat than a thermometer can withstand. This is when the extreme amount of the readings themselves cause the destruction.

Examples:

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Advertising

A short-lived series of commercials for Applebee's depicts a Tin-Can Robot explaining to the viewer about various promotions at the family restaurant while printing them out from its torso, then proceeds to smoke and catch on fire because of how good these deals are or how many of them there are.

Anime & Manga

Fairy Tail: During a test of strength on a power reader during the Grand Magic Games arc, Cana uses the weakest of the 3 Fairy spells, and the reader shatters, this is just after one of the sages(supposedly the most powerful mages in the world) attacks it and get's below 9000, it also makes for a subtle reference.

Dragon Ball Z: If scouters aren't getting broken, they're blowing up while their owners are still wearing them. No wonder they got phased out of the series.

Vegeta's power level in the Namek arc broke at least two scouters — the first time, Zarbon's scouter blew up when he killed Cui, and Frieza's new scouter exploded when Vegeta proved he could actually go toe-to-toe with him (at least until Frieza transformed).

A filler scene later on showed that SSJ Goku and final-form Frieza could blow up computers in different solar systems, implicitly killing the random superpowered mooks watching them.

In the first Cooler movie, Sauza's scouter explodes when the injured Goku is given a senzu bean.

In the OVA where Vegeta's brother Tarble showed up, Goku demonstrated his scouter was obsolete by casually making it explode in this manner.

In Resurrection "F", Frieza's emergence from a healing tank makes every scouter on the spaceship explode.

The Phobos computers in the Darkstalkers OVA do this when reading Donovan's power (at the same time that Donovan is unleashing a very powerful attack on the Phobos).

YuYu Hakusho: In the Three Kings arc, a group of Raizen's old training buddies come out of seclusion to pay their respects and join the new tournament. They collectively flex their power to "see if they've still got it" and Yomi's advisor's energy-reading device goes off the scale before it explodes. Miles away from the energy source.

Comic Books

In the Fantastic Four, Reed and Sue's son Franklin is a Mutant with Goo Goo Godlike potential. So Reed tasked a robot "playmate", H.E.R.B.I.E., to monitor for any manifestations of Franklin's powers. The first time Franklin really begins to start pouring out psionic energy, H.E.R.B.I.E. issues a few futile warnings before overloading and exploding.

In Joe Bar Team, the main characters destroy numerous radar speed gun radars with their motorbikes using this very trope.

Jon: From now on, I'm keeping track of the calories you take in! POW!Jon: My calculator blew up.

Fan Works

Mentioned by John in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World. After Cirda of the Terrible Trio announces that her scan of the other three is Over Nine Thousand, John reflects that if he were added to the mix her scanner would probably blow up.

Film

Assassin's Creed (2016): Callum's final session in the Animus results in a synchronization so perfect that it breaks the device. It also results in Callum being presented with visions of past assassins surrounding him and his long-dead mother inducting him into the order through their shared genetic memory. Everyone observing the moment is shocked because they weren't aware that the Animus was capable of such a thing.

In Moving Pictures, a resograph (a device designed to measure changes in the nature of reality) starts going haywire thanks to the influence of the filmmakers in Holy Wood. Eventually, the showing of an Epic Movie about the Ankh-Morpork Civil War causes a rift in reality big enough to allow a Thing from the Dungeon Dimensions to escape onto the Discworld, which makes the resograph explode violently.

In The Last Continent, Ponder Stibbons' magic-measuring thaumometer melts when the magic field used to create the Last Continent exceeds its limit of one million thaums.

Subverted when Ridcully licks his thumb, holds it up, observes the octarine spark and comments that, yes, that looks about right.

In Children of the Lens, the last physical battle of the series involves a faster-than-light planet hitting a star.

Finally it happened. What happened? Even after the fact none of the observers knew. The fuses of all the recorder and analyzer circuits blew at once. Needles jumped instantly to maximum and wrapped themselves around their stops. Charts and ultraphotographic films showed only straight or curved lines running from the origin to and through the limits in zero time.

In Theirs Not to Reason Why, the equipment used to measure Psychic Powers has a habit of burning out when it's used on Ia. Her precognition in particular is so strong that when they test it on her with a psi damper she stole from the enemy, she burns it out anyway.

Live-Action TV

In the Stargate SG-1 episode "Upgrades", SG-1 is wearing armbands that increase their physical capabilities. The Tok'ra who discovered them has O'Neill squeeze a grip-strength-measuring thingy. After the armband reaches full power, O'Neill actually crushes the strength sensor.

In one episode of Gilligan's Island, Gilligan was playing with a lie detector that had been used earlier. When Mary Ann asked him if he took the coconut cream pie she made and he said no, the lie detector blew up.

Gilligan: Well, it was delicious.

Theater

In Finian's Rainbow, the geologists claim to have discovered gold in Rainbow Valley in such enormous concentration that it broke the needle of their meter.

Video Games

The opening trailer of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 shows Lili watching a tournament fight with her hi-class viewing glasses. She then notices Jun Kazama near the exit and tries to zoom in on her, only for Lili's glasses to explode (minor one).

Shane Killian's "Bogometer", used to measure the dishonesty of creationist claims, explodes at 3:18 of this video when Janet Folgar claims that "It was Bible-believing Christians who gave us science as we know it."

This trope became a minor Running Gag on The Nostalgia Critic. The Critic would count a certain feature in a movie; after a handful of examples, an explosion would sound and the Critic would cry out, "Oh, great, you blew up the (X) Meter!"

In the Flander's Company episode "German Übber Fantasy", Gadgeteer Genius Caleb builds a "Millstone Detector" to help Hippolyte sort out supervillain candidates. That's when Maxence and Déborah, a pair of insufferable, fashion-obsessed gits, come by. The detector starts beeping very fast and explodes.

On Fundies Say The Darndest Things, a common response to an ironic statement made by one of the fundies whose statements have been quoted is that it has "destroyed my irony meter."

This originated on the Usenet group alt.atheism, back in the 1990s: an irony meter was never mentioned except in the context of its (usually spectacular) failure:

"Every irony meter on the planet just exploded." "My irony meter has melted a hole in the ground and is putting up plumes of radioactive fallout." "I spent extra to get a heavy duty, auto-ranging industrial irony meter, with the 4th generation titanium filter and laser readout and everything, less than a year ago. Pfft, it's toast. First time I've had to use a fire extinguisher of a piece of smoking electronics." "OK, Mark, you now owe me a new Myth 6 (model 66) Irony-O-Meter. It was not even a week old and it blew up like Krakatoa."

"And apparently this one has infinite irony, because my irony meter is still going. You are going to have to make your own guys, it isn't patented or anything, and i just made it out of spare parts: mostly my old ironymeter, a clock and one of those stroke counters some people use in golf."

At one point, a meter designed to measure "nigh absurd amounts of irony" overloaded so much that it blew up straight through the roof, into space, and impacted Venus so hard it caused the planet to undergo nuclear fusion and turn into a miniature sun.

On Phineas and Ferb, Phineas is trying to track a cute little alien, so he built a cute-meter. Later he mentioned that he filtered Isabella's cuteness and when he turned the safety off, the cute-meter blew up.

"Polka-Dot Puss" has Jerry trying to convince Tom he's sick. He sticks an old-fashion ambient thermometer in his mouth and flicks a lighter on under it. It quickly goes to maximum, then the glass tube expands at the end and then blows all the pressure with a whistle.

In "Down and Outing", Jerry presses down on the car's gas pedal, and the car ends up going so fast that the speedometer breaks.

Happens twice to the same power scanner in the Steven Universe episode "Garnet's Universe". The scanner actually reassembled itself just so it could blow up again. Of course, Steven made everything in this episode up, so it's not a problem.

A multimeter can be easily damaged by trying to measure the resistance of a circuit with negligible resistance. Current equals voltage divided by resistance, so a no-resistance circuit essentially causes a Divide by Zero error and dangerously high current. Most models will just blow a fuse, but ones that don't have a fuse can be permanently junked (although they probably won't explode).

Old analogue Voltmeters and Ammeters suffered a similar flaw where if the reading caused the needle to move too quickly it could strike the highest point and actually deform, rendering it completely useless. It was crucial to make sure the range was set properly, and to observe correct polarity (hooking it up backwards would make the needle go the opposite way and deform against 0).

Some analog thermometers will break if exposed to a temperature range they're not designed for (like boiling water, if it's a medical thermometer).

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